[Author's Note:Everyone, thank you for your reviews and please keep them coming. I'm glad this story appeals to all of you. Some people, though, gave King Sombra too much hate, but I think he's a great villain (he's, of course, to be modeled after Sauron from Lord of the Rings). And also, the Evil Twilight thing is great fan fiction material I think it would also fit Twilight as well.

That's what I love about being an otaku because you can get inspiration from anime. Also, another reference will be in the story that a lot of you will recognize I'm sure. So, again, thank you for the reviews and enjoy more of this great story to come.]

"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering…" –Master Yoda (Star Wars)

A pink train rode through the snow of Northern Equestria, back to Ponyville; all of its occupants not saying anything, a heavy blanket of silence filled the car. Spike lay on Fluttershy's lap, his crying stopped as he was now asleep while she stroked him lovingly. Each one of Twilight's family and friends could only watch the little guy as he slept, wondering how what he was dreaming about. For Rainbow Dash and Shining Armor they were going to give Twilight a good strict lecture about what she had done, Shining Armor especially. Applejack looked over at the prismatic mare and said, "Hey RD, are you feeling okay?"

Caught off guard by the question, and broken out of her daze, she huffed at her. "No, AJ, I'm not okay! I'm ticked off at what that egghead did to the one dragon she practically treats like a son. Just look at him, for Celestia's sake!"

"I know what she did to him RD, and I'm just as ticked off at her as you are. But I'm keeping my anger in check for when we get back home so I can chew that 'egghead' up like an apple and then spit her back out."

"You're not the only one, darling. I want to have a go at her as I said before," Rarity said.

"Maybe she was just under a lot of stress from this," Applejack said. "I mean protecting a whole empire is tough."

Twilight looked through each of her books, her eyes were now normal but her coat was still the same faded dark purple that it had become moments ago. Inside her, she was still graving to taste the magic; to her it was like what Pinkie Pie's sweets were to her. As she studied, her Master spoke to her, guiding her on the ways of dark magic. As he taught her, the things became clear to her. She looked over at her Friendship Reports, and then laughed coldly before she threw them into the fire with the black charred remains of the photos of her friends. "The magic of friendship," she laughed. "What a joke. Magic doesn't have anything to do with friendship. Celestia will never understand."

For at least two more hours, she studied until exhaustion set into her. She blew out the candle and left the spare ones where they were to be used again for another night. As she got over to the stairs that led to her bed she looked over and saw the stand that that stupid pet owl of hers would stand perched on. An idea popped into her head. She smiled. "Maybe I'll try that tomorrow night or next week."

The idea still in her head, she slept. But later on at night she was plagued by nightmares from her family and friends—almost like the one she had of Zecora when she didn't know who she was at the time—and they got worse and worse. In the dark void she sat, each one of her friends towered over, their eyes covered by shadow. "You ruined everything, Twilight," Applejack said. "Your brother trusted you with making a good wedding and you got jealous because you just didn't want him to be happy!"

"That's right!" Fluttershy said, who was no longer docile and shy and whose eyes were also shrouded. "You were jealous of him and Cadence wanting to be together!"

Twilight began to feel her eyes heat up, tears welling up and sliding down her cheeks. Each of her friends continued to berate and laugh at her, taunting her and saying she was a worthless pile of manure. In her heart, she felt the words pierce through it like spears through a piece of tanned animal hide. "Stop it!" she cried, covering her head with her hooves.

"Look at the little baby!" Rainbow Dash taunted with a nasty snicker, "What's the little baby gonna do? Go and cry to your mommy and daddy?"

"Maybe she should do that!" Rarity said. "The little foal should just let her parents smother her with kisses and give her a bottle."

"Maybe she needs a diaper change!" Pinkie Pie laughed.

Each one of them continued to taunt her until she turned away from them and started to run. She didn't know where and it didn't matter—she just wanted to get away from all of them and the hurtful things they said. Why were they being like this? They were her friends…weren't they? They should be counseling her and telling her everything was okay, not putting her down and saying nasty things about her. Maybe her parents and brother could help, maybe even her foalsitter Cadence. She and her had a strong bond since she was a little filly; surely she would listen to her as would her BBBFF. Continuing to run through the nothing-void, she saw her family and brother and foalsitter. Finally, she thought to herself, I know they won't hurt me.

She went up to them and said, "Mom, Dad…what's happening to my friends?"

Her mother looked at her. "You should know with how smart you are. I can't believe I gave birth to such an idiot filly! I should have never birthed you!"

"I second that!" her father said. "This family shouldn't have a failure like you in it!"

"Looking at you disgusts me. Mom was right, you should have never been born and my life—our life—would have been better off without you," Shining Armor said.

"Shiny, please…!" Twilight cried and went up to him to try and get some comfort, only for the stallion to buck her hard in the face. She hit the floor, coughing a little with the taste of blood filling her mouth.

"Touch me again and I'm going to knock your teeth out next!"

The lavender unicorn turned to her foalsitter for salvation. "Cadence, please… Think of all the good times we had together, our secret dance."

Cadence scowled at her. "Shining's right about you…everypony would be better off without you. I can't believe I agree with your parents to look after you! I should have just locked you in your room when I did agree to foal-sit you."

After the pink alicorn was finished saying what needed to be said, the others soon formed around her and started saying hurtful things to her while she just covered her head, tears cascading down her face mumbling "Stop it! STOP IT!" but she knew they wouldn't…

All was quiet.

Twilight looked up and saw King Sombra looking down at her with a look of sorrow as she looked up at him with her tear-streaked face. He smiled. The smile was gentle and loving. He knelt down beside her and brought her close while she hugged on to him and he just stroked her lovingly. "Shh…it's all right, my dear. I'll always be here for you. As I said before I'll never betray you like they did."

Twilight looked up at him, her crying stopped. "Thank you Master."

In reality she got up from her bed, having awoken from her dream. Everything that she had just experienced was true…and the memories of the past. The wedding was the one she was most hurt by because none of them apologized to her, so why did she choose to forgive them in the first place? All the questions entered her head and she found it difficult to get back to sleep. She got out of bed and went out the door and downstairs to her books, hoping that reading one of them would get her mind off of those nightmares. Looking through her large collection of books, she found one and picked it out and went over to the fireplace and sat on the chair. Normally she wanted to start the fire place but didn't, so she just used one of the candles for light since starting a fire would take too much of her magic since she was too exhausted from her practice.

As she read through the book, something caught her attention; her ears flickered as she heard a sound.

She looked over and saw him. "Spike…"

"I never did nothing wrong Twilight, I just was worried. Why?"

"I know what I did and I regret it deeply now. I shouldn't have done it! All the stress of that test and the Princess scolding me made me do it."

Spike shook his head. "No, you wanted to do it! You hated me since I was born!"

"I never did Spike! Believe me! You were the most precious thing to me, even more than my books."

"But if the library was on fire and I was trapped inside, what would be more important to you…me or your books?'

"Spike, you know that no matter how many books I have, nothing will change how I feel about you. I promise."

"Why are you lying to me again?"

"I'm not!" she cried. She went up to him and picked him up and hugged him to show him that she cared for him. He was frozen, not knowing what he should believe after what happened. "Spike, I love my books, you're right about that. But I love you even more so than them. Nothing will change how I feel about you, and if we can start over, then things will be different from now on."

He didn't say anything, until she pulled him away from her to show that it was not real—the whole thing had been a hallucination. What she was holding was a wooden Trojan horse head. Her eyes began to burn, tears forming before they went down her cheeks. Even though what she knew wasn't real she meant what she said and wanted to make things right again with her beloved assistant.

She threw the piece of carved wood angrily away and began to get back to reading her book, though her mind was still formulating ways on how to make amends with the small lizard. She knew he was the only one she was going to forgive and not the others. Not that sugar-addict, childish foal Pinkie Pie or that prissy little unicorn, or that lazy braggart Rainbow Dash, or even her former mentor Princess Celestia.

Going back to her book, she read for a while longer. The voice that spoken to her earlier still haunted her while she tried to block it out. She was sorry, she was sorry, she was sorry…

The pink train continued on as the ponies, excluding the conductor, was all sleeping in their sleeper cars. Each of them tried to get some rest but it was difficult; they knew that this whole thing with Twilight was going to keep from getting sleep. Because of that Spike had to sleep with Fluttershy and the yellow Pegasus didn't have any problems with him. Back at the Crystal Empire, Shining Armor and Cadence sat in the throne room of the castle, around the table, and talked about what they were going to do about restoring the Crystal Empire. Cadence talked about wanting to leave the Empire and go to Canterlot and speak with Celestia—he didn't like the idea of leaving and wanted to keep searching for the Crystal Heart. "Shining, please…Twilight couldn't find the Crystal Heart, and if you can't, then I think the only option we have left is talking to my aunt Celestia."

"I have to try Cadence," he said, pacing through the room. "I'm not going to have him take back the Crystal Empire."

"And if he does? What then?"

Shining Armor didn't say anything. He just looked at her with a blank expression before looking toward the floor. "Then I don't know. Maybe I'll just watch as everything goes to Tartarus."

"Look, both of us have been through a lot of rest stress since he showed his ugly face. Maybe we just need some sleep," Cadance said.

"How can I sleep when he's right outside the spell?"

"Honey, please…let it go. More so, I'm worried about how he said somepony will take his place when he's gone. What did he mean by that?"

"That's something I'm still trying to figure out on top of finding the Crystal Heart."

"Do you think it had something to do with Twilight hurting Spike? Or did you do something to her that made her upset?"

At the mention of that, Shining Armor felt his heart begin to race. Memories of back at Canterlot were coming back: how he told her off, disowned her, and not even apologizing about it when he found out the truth. Hell, he didn't even know the real reason for his migraines was because that…insect…was sucking his love away, not because of having to keep that force field up. When the married couple got into the carriage, he was sweating because when he looked at Twilight in the eye he didn't know how to say that he was sorry for everything; and Cadence saw this in the carriage. She asked him what was wrong and he told her some lie that she (by a miracle) believed it. Now that they were here in the Crystal Empire and she brought up the painful subject, his heart started to beat faster like it was about to burst from his ribcage to the floor.

"Shining Armor," she said using his real name, which to him meant something serious, and he looked at her; her face was stern and wanting to know. "What happened between you and Twilight?" she asked in a low voice.

He sighed. I know she's not going to have mercy on me, and I don't expect her to. He continued to stare as she raised a brow at him in confusion. "Okay, this happened before you, the real you, was found and showed up at the wedding."

"I'm all ears."

And so Shining Armor told her the story about how his little sister accused her of being evil and putting a spell on him because he saw his eyes go into circles. Cadence listened and was horrified by what had happened while she was trapped inside those mines. Her love, captain of the Canterlot Royal Guard, completely destroyed his own sister because he thought she was jealous of him getting married to her—her fake self.

After a good few minutes, Cadence was a statue of shock and didn't know how to respond. Her brain had temporarily shut down. "Cadence, are you okay?" he asked her, hoping she wasn't too upset about it, but with what he had told her she probably was and he couldn't blame her. Looking at her eyes, they were filled with anger so intense that it was like Celestia's magic being shot from them and incinerating his heart. "Cady…"

"Y-you're disgusting!" she yelled at him, and he said nothing. He just stood there while she lashed out at him verbally. "She was your own bucking sister and you decided to break the poor filly's heart and didn't even do anything about it."

"I know, and I should have told you sooner."

"Then why didn't you?"

"I was afraid you would be upset with me a little."

"A little?" she yelled. "Shny, I'm like a volcano right now after what you told me! If you think a simple 'I'm sorry' is going to change all of this, it isn't!" She huffed at him before saying, "I can't even look at you right now. Get your disgusting flank out of my sight!"

It shattered. His eyes started to match the ones Cadence was having—tears. Head down he started to head for the door leading out of the bedroom and didn't bother to look back as he heard it forcefully shut. Alone in the throne room, he curled up into a fetal position on the floor and knew that it was going to bed his bed for who knew how long until she finally cooled down. Though, another thought came into his head: what if she never forgave him for what he did?

It's easy to know she won't, he thought and continued to cry silently. He continued to weep until exhaustion set in and he fell asleep where he was. He missed the comfort of the bedroom.